Every June, at the end of the Idul Fitri holiday, Jakarta is overwhelmed by jobseekers streaming in to try their luck in the city of their dreams, risking deportation if they have no sponsors or relatives to put them up. Public order officers patrol bus stations and expel those who have no ID cards.

Last June, the authorities recorded more than 60,000 such people. Most of them were farmers and other agricultural workers who dreamed of a better life in the capital. The actual number of people leaving their villages for jobs in cities is hard to estimate but it is certainly high enough to cause concern.

It is feared the continuing influx of unskilled jobseekers to urban centers will exacerbate social and economic problems in Indonesia’s major cities. Already home to over 10 million people, Jakarta accepted 70,000 newcomers in 2017.

Rapid urbanization is symptomatic of acute poverty in rural areas, where development has yet to bring about common wellbeing. A study published in November by the SMERU Research Institute concluded that poverty was the root of the problem. It found that younger people are the ones who most likely migrate as they see rural, agrarian life as no longer attractive.

Last year, Agriculture Minister Amran Sulaiman raised his concern about the dwindling farming communities in rural areas. He said the country continued to lose its farmers and that the majority of existing farmers were aged 45 years or older.

“Each year we lose 2 percent of our farmers because they change professions,” Amran said when addressing a graduation ceremony at a university in Surabaya, East Java. He gave an assurance that being a farmer could be an awarding profession if proper technology was applied to maximize productivity.

The minister’s concern makes sense given that Indonesia relies heavily for its food stockpiles on farmers in rural areas, and therefore uncontrolled urbanization may endanger the country’s food security.

The significant decline in the rural population over the last decade can be attributed to migration. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recorded that urban populations outnumbered rural populations for the first time around 2010. The margin has continued to widen since then. In 2016, more than 144 million people lived in cities and only 117 million in rural areas, according to FAO.

The World Bank predicts about 68 percent of Indonesians will be living in cities by 2025.

Inequality

Bapenu, a small village on Taliabu Island in North Maluku, is a perfect instance of how centralized development perpetuates poverty.

It was once known as a major cocoa-producing village. In the 1990s, casual workers would go there in droves from other islands as cocoa pod pickers. At that time, the cocoa business thrived and local farmers became fabulously rich. When the crippling financial crisis hit Indonesia between 1997 and 1998, the price of cocoa beans skyrocketed. Many of the farmers were flush with cash. Their best known splurge was going on the haj to Mecca.

Today, the party is over. Cocoa bean prices have hit rock bottom. Pests have plagued the area and farmers’ incomes are barely enough to make ends meet. Many young people have left the village in search of a better life in other parts of the country.

Some farmers sent their children to universities in cities with the hope they will be able to enter the civil service for a steady income.

On this remote island, transportation is a major issue. Farmers have to embark on a one-night voyage on a wooden boat to reach Luwuk, the nearest town on the neighboring Central Sulawesi mainland, to sell their cocoa beans. There, the commodity gets much better prices than in Taliabu. The islanders would sell their harvest on Taliabu only in cases of emergency.

There are other basic issues that make life on the island unbearable for many young people. Infrastructure is poor. The state-owned electricity company PLN has yet to reach much of the island. Only wealthy families can afford to buy power generators or solar panels to enjoy TV programs while poor families have to make do with old-fashioned kerosene lamps.

Mobile phone connections are weak and found only in certain spots because the nearest cellular base station lies far away from their village.

The situation in Bapenu is a good illustration of the inequality between rural and urban areas that has happened because of centralized development policy, which Indonesia has embraced since it gained independence in 1945. The most obvious indicators include a lack of infrastructure development, poor human resources and poverty.

According to the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, around 2,500, or 7 percent of Indonesia’s villages, still have no access to electricity. Most of them are in the least developed eastern provinces.

In isolated areas like the hinterland of Papua, the poor infrastructure has led to economic hardship. The lack of decent roads has hampered land communication and left local people impoverished. The administration of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has begun honoring his 2014 election promise to “build from the periphery” and opened up isolated areas in Papua and West Papua.

The rural-urban disparities have been confirmed by the Statistics Indonesia (BPS), which has found that the poverty rate in rural areas stands at 13.20 percent and 7.02 percent in urban areas.

BPS’ annual report published in December shows that only 7.55 percent out of the 75,436 villages nationwide fall under the “affluent” category, while a striking 74.49 percent are classed as “developing” and 17.96 percent as “underdeveloped”.

The report assesses villages’ conditions using several indicators, including access to public facilities such as high school buildings, hospitals and pharmacies.

Funds for villages

The government has taken important measures to fix the problem. An imperative policy is the abandonment of its long-time centralized development policy. The country passed a village law in 2014, giving village administrations more authority. It also allows direct cash payments from the central government and other sources.

In the same year, the government issued a regulation on funds for villages — money from the central government to promote innovation and stimulate economic growth in rural areas. Between 2015 and 2018, the government disbursed about Rp 187 trillion (US$13.2 billion), according to the Villages, Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration Ministry.

President Jokowi has promised to increase the funds every year, a pledge his political foes say is a political gimmick for his re-election bid.

Last year, the government allocated Rp 60 trillion in funds for villages, with each recipient obtaining Rp 800 million. Four years on, the scheme is showing some results. A total of 6,518 underdeveloped villages have gained “developing” status and a further 2,665 have become “affluent” in the five year period from 2014 to 2018, according to the BPS.

The Cabinet Secretary Office has credited the village funds scheme for the construction of rural roads, bridges, early childhood education schools, traditional markets and irrigation canals.

“This is a revolutionary policy,” said Anwar Sanusi, the Villages, Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration Ministry’s secretary-general. “In the past, the funds came from the local governments. Now, villages play an important role in the country’s development.”

A landmark development is that now villages can use the money to start their own enterprises, or BUMdes. As of last year, at least 39,000 BUMdes had been established.

But predictably, corruption comes along with the trillions with village bureaucrats being the culprits. Between 2015 and 2018, Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) recorded 181 cases of corruption, involving 184 suspects and the loss of Rp 40.6 billion from public coffers.

“At least 141 village heads have been named suspects,” said ICW researcher Egi Primayogha.

The big sum of money is a huge temptation for village chiefs. Presidential Office’s economic expert Ahmad Erani Yustika loves to speak of how overwhelmed they are with the money and their tendency to misplace priorities.

Despite the clear legal basis, the provision of village funds has raised suspicion that Jokowi’s administration is making the most of the scheme to boost his electability.

If the President gets his way, the 8,122 village chiefs across the archipelago will have yet another reason to laugh all the way to the bank: an additional Rp 3 trillion to be provided under a brand new scheme called dana kelurahan (subdistrict funds), which is yet to be endorsed by the House of Representatives. His critics liken it to vote buying, as the scheme has no solid legal basis and has been initiated as Jokowi campaigns for his second term.

It would need strong political will, transparency and accountability to empower villages sustainably.